


Collectors' Edition

by lilacsigil



Category: Captain Britain and MI: 13
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-02
Updated: 2014-01-02
Packaged: 2018-01-07 04:07:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1115315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacsigil/pseuds/lilacsigil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faiza unpacks some of her superhero collection.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collectors' Edition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misura](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misura/gifts).



"Wow, I can't believe Mum remembered my Avengers poster!" Faiza had brought a box of things from her parents' house to her room at HQ and was unpacking it with much glee. "Actually, I think Dad might have packed it. He sleeps in the day and wanders around all night because of the vampire thing, and Mum keeps making him do useful but quiet things so that he doesn't wake her up all the time."

Dane sat on the end of the bed and dispensed lumps of Blu-Tack. "Is he going to work as a doctor again?"

Faiza stopped unpacking for a moment and shook her head, a fold of her headscarf tipped forward so that Dane couldn't quite see her expression. "The blood is still a problem, even though Jacqueline is helping. Alistair Stuart helped him get a job working on patient outcome assessment for the NHS – it's all done online – but it's not the same. He was always better at the bureaucratic side than I was, but that isn't why he loved medicine." She showed Dane a shiny display box, though its sides were held together by sticky tape. "Look, my Captain Britain action figure, Special Millennium Collectors' Edition!"

"They made Captain Britain action figures? I'm jealous!"

Faiza laughed. "Maybe they'll make one of you soon. Or me! That would be awesome! They'd better make the sword non-removable though, or it'll be going into a million vacuum cleaners across the nation. Just like Captain Britain's little helmet did." 

She showed Dane the figure: it was indeed a helmetless Captain Britain, even if the little plastic face looked more like a squished up Tom Cruise than Brian Braddock. There were random gold stripes down his sides and a holographic sticker right in the middle of his chest, reading "2000".

"You should show Brian. He'll love it!" Dane really wanted to compare the moulded plastic face to Brian's at close range.

"Maybe I should! I saved up cereal box tokens for three months to get this. I had just started at uni and I begged the staff in the Hall kitchens to save them for me. My mum bought six boxes and then she made me eat them when I was home in the holidays."

"She doesn't even like superheroes!" Dane joked, then cursed himself as Faiza's face fell, thinking of her father. 

"She never did," Faiza replied. "And sometimes I think…maybe she was right. Not about the superheroes, but about the collateral damage."

Dane took her hand. "In what way? I mean, she knows that if it wasn't for MI:13, we'd all be overrun by vampires, right?"

"Not that. More that – she grew up in Pakistan and she still remembers what it's like in parts of the country, you know? And it's not just Pakistan. The strongest rule, feuds go on for generations, innocent people end up getting shot. She thinks superheroes are like that."

"Yeah, I guess some are." Dane couldn't argue with that. "But that's not a reason to give up. That's a reason to be different. How many little girls are going to want an Excalibur action figure? And remember how you didn't fight Dracula for personal glory, but to stop him taking over the country?"

Faiza wriggled uncomfortably. "There may have been a little bit of personal glory involved. Defeating him felt great."

Laughing, Dane picked up the Captain Britain action figure. "Okay, we do it all in fancy suits with flashy codenames, that's true. But Captain Britain here still fights to protect people when no-one's looking. You shouldn't be ashamed of that."

"This limited edition and my cereal box collecting raised fifty thousand pounds for Oxfam. Even silly gold stripes and a holographic sticker can do some good." She leaned into Dane's shoulder. "Sometimes I think I'm doing great in this life, and sometimes I realise I've got a long way to go."

"I'm here with you. Me and Captain Britain."

"Special Millennium Collectors' Edition," Faiza corrected. She gently put the action figure back in his box and firmly closed the lid before she kissed Dane. It might be inspiring to be Excalibur, but some superhero activities were best kept private.


End file.
